So the astronomers point something that-a-way and see galaxy 'A' 13.3 billion light years away and claim the thing formed in just 380 million years. I thought stars (not to mention the billions of them in a galaxy) took longer than that to from.

Let's suppose the astronomers turned their equipment in the exact opposite direction and discover galaxy 'B' at the same distance. Wouldn't 'B' be 26.6 billion light years away from 'A'?

ambassador_ahab:So how did the tiny thing that expanded into our universe come into being?

This is going to sound like a stupid answer, but the truth is: Because it had to.

Cosmologists have mathematically proven that sum total of everything that exists in the Universe - including forces, light, energy, matter, and even the hypothesized dark stuff - is zero. That is, the cumulative positive mass-energy content of the Universe is balanced by the negative mass-energy content of the Universe, or that the something is counterbalanced by the minus-something that it exists in. So the expansion of the Universe is not "something from nothing". It is, in fact, nothing. Always has been.

There's only one way to have nothing, and that's to have zero entropy and zero mass-energy. But if the total mass-energy of everything in the Universe is apparently zero, and since nothing means no space-time and thus no time to keep everything from happening at once, the inherent tendency is for nothing to instantly become everything. Because nothing cannot be nothing forever, especially at the quantum level.

If you don't understand, don't worry about it (I barely understand it myself). Just take solace in the fact that the First Cause argument is simply the wrong way to describe what's happened with the Universe.

dofus:So the astronomers point something that-a-way and see galaxy 'A' 13.3 billion light years away and claim the thing formed in just 380 million years. I thought stars (not to mention the billions of them in a galaxy) took longer than that to from.

Let's suppose the astronomers turned their equipment in the exact opposite direction and discover galaxy 'B' at the same distance. Wouldn't 'B' be 26.6 billion light years away from 'A'?

It's because everything in space is expanding away from each other. So no matter where you are, everything looks like it's going away from you.

The balloon example that people use for the big bang is a terrible analogy, because people imagine that Earf is at the centre of the balloon.

Nonrepeating Rotating Binary:Nope. God created that galaxy 6,000 years ago and strategically placed all the photons as if they had come from it billions of years ago.

That God fellow is a clever bastard, ain't he?

Not only clever, but also utterly untrustworthy. What you've described is a god who is willing to literally fark with the entire universe just to deceive us. That is not a being who you can trust on ANYTHING and should not be worshipped.

Shazam999:dofus: So the astronomers point something that-a-way and see galaxy 'A' 13.3 billion light years away and claim the thing formed in just 380 million years. I thought stars (not to mention the billions of them in a galaxy) took longer than that to from.

Let's suppose the astronomers turned their equipment in the exact opposite direction and discover galaxy 'B' at the same distance. Wouldn't 'B' be 26.6 billion light years away from 'A'?

It's because everything in space is expanding away from each other. So no matter where you are, everything looks like it's going away from you.

The balloon example that people use for the big bang is a terrible analogy, because people imagine that Earf is at the centre of the balloon.

They're not explaining correctly, then, since you're supposed to tell people you're on the surface of the balloon, which doesn't even have a center.

mongbiohazard:Nonrepeating Rotating Binary: Nope. God created that galaxy 6,000 years ago and strategically placed all the photons as if they had come from it billions of years ago.

That God fellow is a clever bastard, ain't he?

Not only clever, but also utterly untrustworthy. What you've described is a god who is willing to literally fark with the entire universe just to deceive us. That is not a being who you can trust on ANYTHING and should not be worshipped.

dofus:Let's suppose the astronomers turned their equipment in the exact opposite direction and discover galaxy 'B' at the same distance. Wouldn't 'B' be 26.6 billion light years away from 'A'?

That would only be true if the Universe had a true center and everything was moving away from it equidistantly. But that's not what happened.

The Big Bang is an expansion, not an explosion, meaning the space between the galaxies is filling up as opposed to the edge of the Universe growing out. No matter where you are in the Universe, you'd see the same pattern of galaxies moving away from you. That means there is no center because everywhere is the center.

So, in a way, the theologists were right: The Earth is at the center of the Universe. But so is everything else.

dragonchild:ambassador_ahab: So how did the tiny thing that expanded into our universe come into being?

I've heard some pretty interesting theories. One is that the Big Bang was basically (basically, basically, VERY basically) a whopper of a quantum fluctuation, one that would (on average) happen once every (incomprehensibly ridiculous number) years. The odds of this happening are so low that it's far less likely than sentience to emerge from the vacuum of space itself. It's so absurdly unlikely that critics have pointed out that the odds are practically zero, but the counterpoint there is that we only need for it to happen once in order for there to be selection bias. After all, we have no insight as to how much time the universe did not exist.

Clash City Farker:AdolfOliverPanties: Big Bang happened. What came before it or caused it? Still up in the air, if they can even be answered.

Wait, are you saying The Big Bang Theory is a now The Big Bang Law, or are you saying you believe it happened?

A theory can't become a law. We don't use those words that way in science. A theory will never be anything but a theory. There is no higher rank it can aspire to. Some theories, such as the big bang or evolution, are so well supported by evidence that we are confident that their basic idea is true, although the details are always a work in progress.

COMALite J:ambassador_ahab: Each of those is an entire galaxy. And each galaxy has (to use scientific terms,) a shiatload of stars.

The concepts of distance, time, and size are mind-blowing anytime I see an image like that. I know that it all came from a big "bang" or "giant expansion" or however one wants to describe it. And I trust that physicists understand it as well as it can currently be understood. But I still can't wrap my brain around "what happened before that?" I know that all of that stuff was apparently packed into a space smaller than an atom.

So how did the tiny thing that expanded into our universe come into being? If there were previous universes/others, then when did that whole thing "start"? How was there "always something" and why?

Or maybe it's like trying to explain the difference between blue and green to someone that was born blind...the concepts are too distant from my everyday life for me to comprehend.

Consider that according to most of these theories, time and space also began with the Big Bang, not just matter and energy. Asking what was ‶before" the Big Bang (or what‵outside" of the Universe) is like asking what′s north of the North Pole. There is no there there. There was no then then (or there then, for that matter).

The universe minus the "stuff" is nothing. "Nothing" can have an infinite timeline. Time is just an invention of man, like a foot, yard, mile, etc.

When a religious person tells you god did this, ask him or her why this god who can create a universe out of nothing cares about a couple of male hairless primates serving their wedding cake to some other hairless primates.

I'm always amused that the militant atheists bring up religion more than the faithful folks. We didn't even get past post 1 before the irrelevant derp dropped.

The problem I can't reconcile about seeing images of things that old is that they're just images. They don't represent the current state of the object as it exists at this point in time, they're long gone. When the light left the object, 1) it wasn't that far away and 2) at a certain point, our solar system hadn't formed yet.

So how can we posit a map of the visible universe if time and space have altered the images we see of no-longer existing objects? There needs to be some sort of correction to account for long-burned-out galaxies and their current form and momentum.

Imagine if the room you're sitting in had light travel delay so that images 20 feet away were actually images from 100 years ago. The wall wouldn't be there, you might make out a tree that used to be there before the clearing was made for the house. At 10 feet, you might see a fragment of a foundation, at 5 feet the furniture of the previous occupant, etc. What we'd see would be a very distorted image of many forms over time.

Now apply that to the huge 3D "maps" of the universe. The time span is so great that those far off structures don't exist.

Nonrepeating Rotating Binary:Nope. God created that galaxy 6,000 years ago and strategically placed all the photons as if they had come from it billions of years ago.

That God fellow is a clever bastard, ain't he?

Actually the universe has only been in existence for 12 picoseconds, and all of our memories have been implanted to trick us into thinking we have always existed. God is a clever bastard indeed. This means I literally popped into being as the last atom on the tip of my finger broke contact with my mouse as I hit the 'Add comment' button, and God prewrote this response to give me this illusion I am cleverly creative.

Gone to Plaid:This means I literally popped into being as the last atom on the tip of my finger broke contact with my mouse as I hit the 'Add comment' button, and God prewrote this response to give me this illusion I am cleverly creative.

Hmmm. It wasn't clever so I guess we can only conclude that there is no God.

Ishkur:dofus: Let's suppose the astronomers turned their equipment in the exact opposite direction and discover galaxy 'B' at the same distance. Wouldn't 'B' be 26.6 billion light years away from 'A'?

That would only be true if the Universe had a true center and everything was moving away from it equidistantly. But that's not what happened.

The Big Bang is an expansion, not an explosion, meaning the space between the galaxies is filling up as opposed to the edge of the Universe growing out. No matter where you are in the Universe, you'd see the same pattern of galaxies moving away from you. That means there is no center because everywhere is the center.

So, in a way, the theologists were right: The Earth is at the center of the Universe. But so is everything else.

Yeah. I get the 'space is expanding so everything is moving away from everything else' angle. My hang-up on that one is that you would think that there was a 3 dimensional extent to universe at some point. So even if things continued to expand away from each other there would still be a well defined 'edge' beyond which would be nothing (whatever that is). That is that if for some reason life developed on one of these worlds there would only be stars in one region of the sky.

Bottom line being that I would disagree with the statement that 'everywhere is the center of the universe". Some are more center than others.

jvl:Gone to Plaid: This means I literally popped into being as the last atom on the tip of my finger broke contact with my mouse as I hit the 'Add comment' button, and God prewrote this response to give me this illusion I am cleverly creative.

Hmmm. It wasn't clever so I guess we can only conclude that there is no God.

ModernPrimitive01:I wish we would focus the Hubble on planets we might actually be able to get to. I mean even if we developed speed of light travel, it would take us 133 billion years to get there? Why even bother with that one? Why not focus on somewhere that might be useful to us at some point?

So we can attack them and steal their resources? I see where you're going with this, Hitler.

lohphat:The problem I can't reconcile about seeing images of things that old is that they're just images. They don't represent the current state of the object as it exists at this point in time, they're long gone. When the light left the object, 1) it wasn't that far away and 2) at a certain point, our solar system hadn't formed yet.

So how can we posit a map of the visible universe if time and space have altered the images we see of no-longer existing objects? There needs to be some sort of correction to account for long-burned-out galaxies and their current form and momentum.

Imagine if the room you're sitting in had light travel delay so that images 20 feet away were actually images from 100 years ago. The wall wouldn't be there, you might make out a tree that used to be there before the clearing was made for the house. At 10 feet, you might see a fragment of a foundation, at 5 feet the furniture of the previous occupant, etc. What we'd see would be a very distorted image of many forms over time.

Now apply that to the huge 3D "maps" of the universe. The time span is so great that those far off structures don't exist.

So what's your problem exactly? What you said is basically correct. The galaxies in these pictures, if not gone entirely, are populated with an entirely new generation of stars at this point. The images aren't any less 'true'. They're just a composite of lots of areas of space over time. We don't know what's there now and will never know.... so what's the problem again?

Engineers usually aren't delusional since they are the ones stuck actually building things. The only ones tumescent about a bunch of math describing impossible combinations of non-existent materials and magical quantities of energy are people who think sci-fi is real.

subfactorial:So what's your problem exactly? What you said is basically correct. The galaxies in these pictures, if not gone entirely, are populated with an entirely new generation of stars at this point. The images aren't any less 'true'. They're just a composite of lots of areas of space over time. We don't know what's there now and will never know.... so what's the problem again?

At 13.5B years, I doubt there's enough H2 to form significant new stars -- my guess is that the oldest galaxies are burned out with the central black hole having consumed most of the central mass. There was a recent article that we're past "peak stars" -- we're already on the downhill slide into entropy as new star formation is not nearly as rapid as it once was. So those distant object should look and behave very differently than the images we're shown.

Bloody Templar:Contents Under Pressure: When a religious person tells you god did this, ask him or her why this god who can create a universe out of nothing cares about a couple of male hairless primates serving their wedding cake to some other hairless primates.

Having spent most of my life as a skeptic, recent events in my life have led me recently to revisit my own religious leanings, and I'd ask you not to paint with strokes that are much too broad. I've decided that I believe in God, I believe in Christ. I do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible (e.g., Genesis works great as allegory, but not as a literal account of things) and no, I don't think God gives a flying fark about gay marriage.

Not every Christian is a bigot, homophobe, Republican, or troglodyte.

The ones who aren't are so rare and difficult to find that it would require another Hubble telescope sweep.

Clash City Farker:That doesnt even make sense. We dont know our position relative to the boundaries of space.

Space has no boundaries. Wherever you are in the Universe, the relationship of all the galaxies to you would look exactly the same (ie: they're all receding away and the farthest one are receding faster giving the impression that you are at the dead center of everything).

Ishkur:subfactorial: Bottom line being that I would disagree with the statement that 'everywhere is the center of the universe". Some are more center than others.

No, because everything came from the same point at the beginning. That point is the center. Since that point was everything, then everywhere is the center.

Yeah, still no. If everything was in *exactly* the same spot then everything would continue to be in *exactly* in the same spot. Expanding universe or no. At some point there was some daylight (haha) between matter//energy to occupy some space for it to expand away from everything else. There should still be an edge to this somewhere.

To consider the idea that space extends for 13B years in every direction from every point (and that there are visable things in every direction) implies that there is an infinite amount of space with a correspondingly infinite amount of matter/energy in total. I don't think any well accepted theory of cosmology makes that argument... so what am I missing then?

Rent Party:ambassador_ahab: ModernPrimitive01: I mean even if we developed speed of light trave

I figure the only way humans could ever really explore the universe "star-trek-style" would be to discover and develop some manner of travel that is considerably faster than the speed of light.

No, we could do it if we could develop a working Broussard drive. What it would mean is that you could jet about the universe exploring stars, but you could never come home, as everyone you know would be centuries dead.

You don't need FTL. You need relativistic velocity and a willingness to abandon every single thing on Earth forever.

subfactorial:Bottom line being that I would disagree with the statement that 'everywhere is the center of the universe". Some are more center than others.

Wait a minute, I think I figured out a way to make the balloon analogy work. Here goes:

Imagine that the balloon is a 100% perfect sphere. If everything that exists is on the surface of the sphere, then anywhere you are on that sphere is technically the "center". By traveling around the sphere, you could get closer to some other thing on that sphere relative to where you used to be. But even once you got there, you wouldn't be closer to the "edge" of the sphere because there is no edge. If you are only traveling on the surface, then your perception of the relative size of the sphere would never change, ever, for any reason.

Like if you decided to start traveling around the equator of earth. You'd never get closer to the "edge" of the equator...you could circle the globe forever, but you'd always perceive the equator as being the same size and never be "closer to the edge."

subfactorial:Yeah, still no. If everything was in *exactly* the same spot then everything would continue to be in *exactly* in the same spot. Expanding universe or no.

Not if the spot is expanding, which is all the Universe is: An expanding singularity from enthalpy to entropy. The center is not in the Universe, the center IS the Universe.

subfactorial:At some point there was some daylight (haha) between matter//energy to occupy some space for it to expand away from everything else. There should still be an edge to this somewhere.

The Universe doesn't have an edge anymore than the Earth has an edge. Go in any direction far enough and you'll just wind up where you started. Moreover, wherever you go, the Universe will look exactly the same to you. You will perceive everything as moving away from your position in space. Add the Theory of Relativity and things get pretty wibbly wobbly, timey wimey....

Yes, the Universe is weird. It is a very very strange and somewhat incomprehensible dimension of reality. It is not just stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we CAN imagine.

subfactorial:To consider the idea that space extends for 13B years in every direction from every point (and that there are visable things in every direction) implies that there is an infinite amount of space with a correspondingly infinite amount of matter/energy in total. I don't think any well accepted theory of cosmology makes that argument... so what am I missing then?

Alright, time for Lawrence Krauss' "Universe From Nothing" lecture, which should be required viewing for every participant in every Fark Big Bang thread. There's something you're not grasping and I think he can explain it better (with visual aids).

/no, watch the whole thing//the thread will still be here when you get back

The page I linked above is very simplistic in nature but it gives a good idea of the concept we're trying to get across. Keep in mind it's not possible to cleanly show how it works on a two dimensional screen, and the scale is much too small, but the gist of the concept is there.

ambassador_ahab:subfactorial: Bottom line being that I would disagree with the statement that 'everywhere is the center of the universe". Some are more center than others.

Wait a minute, I think I figured out a way to make the balloon analogy work. Here goes:

Imagine that the balloon is a 100% perfect sphere. If everything that exists is on the surface of the sphere, then anywhere you are on that sphere is technically the "center". By traveling around the sphere, you could get closer to some other thing on that sphere relative to where you used to be. But even once you got there, you wouldn't be closer to the "edge" of the sphere because there is no edge. If you are only traveling on the surface, then your perception of the relative size of the sphere would never change, ever, for any reason.

Like if you decided to start traveling around the equator of earth. You'd never get closer to the "edge" of the equator...you could circle the globe forever, but you'd always perceive the equator as being the same size and never be "closer to the edge."

Ok. I could see that. If space-time itself were inherently curved (and not simply locally deformed by massive objects) then I could see the "no edge" angle. The implication being that given a sufficiently long time and FTL travel in a straight line, adjusted for the continuing expansion, you could end up in the place where you started. Yes?

Why do you feel that urge? We already have pictures of other worlds. And? They'll look pretty much like features of this planet, since we are, like, in the same universe and made of the same matter and obeying the same rules. Unless you don't believe that, in which case, how can you trust the pictures we take with instruments built here?